Photo by Onyango Racheal
I read in the Sunday Nation today that the electoral commission is developing guidelines that should enable Kenyans in the Diaspora to participate in the 2012 general election. This means that I could actually get to participate in the first general election under the new constitution.
Whereas I am excited at the prospect, I cannot help but throw my eyes back to 2007, when the image I had of the new post-Moi Kenya was shattered.
We trooped patriotically to our polling stations, braving the scorching sun and torrential downpours. We voted peacefully, and those of us with televisions and radios peacefully went back to our homes to watch the Electoral Commission of Kenya fulfill its mandate. We watched and we waited. We prayed and we waited. We watched the goings on at Kenya International Conference Centre (KICC) in horrified fascination.
In our eyes, Kivuitu, then Chair of ECK, the bastion of transparency and steadfastness had let us down: A hasty end to a protracted tallying process; a hasty descent into chaos and a disgraceful end to a once illustrious career. That wasn’t so long ago. Now here we are again, starting the countdown to another momentous election. I think it is healthy to have some trepidation about it.
What has changed? We have a new elections body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) led by Isaack Hassan, who has already been recognized for successfully overseeing the referendum that led to a new constitution and a good number of by-elections. He just got the CIO 100 Leadership Award for introducing electronic voter registration and electronic vote transmission. Good progress I guess, but have we learnt any lessons on democracy and peace? Are we ready to open our eyes and ears and stop being hoodwinked by greedy politicians? Are we willing to make the right choices, live and let live? I know I am. I hope Kenya is too.
On another note, I just read this from Neil Postman´s famous book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: “Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into – what else? – another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.” (P. 69).
I never thought of voting that way before, though I must admit that I´ve always been a bit skeptical about opinion polls.
